On Learning English
Over the past several months we’ve had the pleasure of working with young refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Nepal, Iraq, Bosnia, and Somalia. They took a Nine Academy class, learning how to use Flip cameras and edit video using Final Cut Express, and they also spent time learning to write blogs. Here are two of the students’ thoughts on the process of learning English.
Alvin:
I first learned English in Sierra Leone while I was in school. We learned British English, so when I came to America it wasn’t hard to learn American English, but it was also not that easy for people to understand what I was saying because of my accent. I’m still learning how to speak American English. The hardest thing is pronouncing words. I have learned how to pronounce words based on how they sound and not by how they are spelled.
It was cool when I learned American English, and I felt like I could speak and people would understand me. It was also funny when I heard recent African immigrants trying to speak American English because they were pronouncing all the words with an accent and it sounded funny, but then I remembered I once used to speak like they did.
I don’t think I want to lose my accent because I love it and I would like to go back to Sierra Leone one day and go to my village and be able to speak in a way that people there will understand me.
Deepak:
Learning English was not so hard for me because I began learning in Nepal. The reason that I cannot speak English perfectly is because in Nepal it was not a compulsory class. We did have pretty complicated books, which were all written in English, but we never went through English practically. Our teachers who studied in Bhutan were all excellent and also fluent in English because they learned both theoretically and practically, but we were only taught theoretically.
When I first tried to speak English in front of people, they just laughed which never helped me to gain confidence. I have been studying English for about 11 years but it always seems to me foreign. I have never felt comfortable speaking English. I think English is a confusing but interesting language. I have always been interested in learning new words and phrases in English.
When I came to the United States for the first time I felt so scared because I wondered what I should speak in front of people and how they would react when I said something to them. I started going to a school where I could not speak anything because I felt awkward asking questions. I started taking ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] classes, which truly helped me to gain confidence. When I am in school sometimes I feel like I am speaking English fluently in a proper manner but sometimes I feel like I still don’t know anything about English, like I am a little kid in the world of English.
My parents have never been to school and they do not speak English. They are learning too by going to the International Institute every day. When they go shopping I need to be there in order to translate words for them. My parents are not getting jobs because they don’t speak English, so I would like to suggest to my friends who are still in Nepal and who will be coming here soon, to learn to speak English practically so they can speak confidently.
Category: Refugees
